It's a Good Thing liner notes by Neil Tesser of NPR

"I could tell you that this entire project was a labor of love, born of the mutual respect among Davis, conductor Shelly Berg, producer Greg Errico, and lifelong jazz fan Sam Beler, the businessman who spared few expenses in bringing this album to life. (I could, but I really don't have to: the grand cameraderie and shared joy of creation wash over anyone who views the DVD that accompanies this album.) Yet to some, "labor of love" carries a whiff of desperation - the suggestion that talented people worked on the cheap, or that they had to love the labor, had to nurture the baby that no one else wanted - and as you've by now come to see, nothing could be further from the truth. If the musicians on this recording enjoyed the hell out of themselves while making this disc, it's because they, as seasoned professionals, so rarely find themselves in a situation like this - where everyone else works as well and as hard as they do themselves."

"So I won't try to explain all the things this album is. The special circumstances of reuniting Davis with his Basie band buddies; the spectacular synergy of Davis's huge voice and the gigantic arrangements and the jaw-dropping solos throughout; the very fact that the album's heady brew of power and precision has percolated in the mind of Sam Beler since he first heard and met Jamie Davis a decade ago - I could list them all and still not really explain the impact of the music, because the most accurate description can't quite catch the spirit of what you'll hear."

"Instead, let me tell you what the album is not. As Sam Beler likes to say, 'It's no dog and pony show' - by which he means, there's nothing phony here. No studio tricks or programming gimmicks. No fake emotionalism in the music: Jamie Davis grew up as the son of a preacher man in the Pentecostal Church, and he served in the Army, performing for his fellow soldiers as part of the Special Services Division, and those experiences do not breed insincerity. You won't find a false note on the disc."

"Instead, you'll find the truth in the words of trumpeter Scotty Barnhart - a longtime member of the Basie band, a sparkling musical personality, and the author of one of this album's many remarkable solos. 'The very first note of whatever you put on,' Barnhart says, 'I guarantee you'll feel better from listening to it.'"

"And that, as Jamie Davis could tell you, is what this album is all about."

NEIL TESSER
"Listen Here!", the public-radio jazz review